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Samsung is Korean, they're the ones with the fabs Apple uses. TSMC (Taiwan) will be getting some of their business in the future (contracts have been signed to split 14nm A9 production between Samsung and TSMC), but they're not doing that yet.

Now, for actual factories, those are in China. But not the semiconductor fabs.

I'm no Apple fan, the only Apple I've owned is an Apple 2 (that fired up just fine last time I plugged it in). But I would certainly take an Apple product over some piece-of-shit Dell or HP crapware. My current laptop is a Thinkpad...

HP is essentially a different company, as it split itself into pieces. Agilent is the real HP. The company with that name today only has some of the original buildings. Whereas Apple has remained the same company all along; it grew and evolved but it never split off its core business and attached the name to some minor sideline instead.

Assuming you don't count the whole messy business with NeXt- i.e., Jobs leaving, founding a competing company, Apple heading to the point of bankruptcy, buying NeXt in a sort of reverse takeover in which the NeXt board (i.e. Jobs) takes control of the company, replacing their entire product line (Mac OS) with NeXt products. And then, of course, switching their primary business model to selling audio players and phones, with their major revenue source being a content distribution platform.

So yeah, definitely exactly the same company as existed in 1986.

I still take your point, but it's disingenuous to pretend that Apple hasn't been through the corporate meat grinder just as much as any other long-lived company.

So you're saying that release is less important than *starting* design? Really? Do you think that HP just magically intuited what Apple was doing, then spat out a product, without any planning or development, in order to beat something that didn't really exist yet to the punch? I'd actually be impressed if they did, but that just doesn't seem possible.

They still build computers...workstations, servers, business systems...just like they did before Woz cobbled together some Fairchild opAmps around 1974. Which incidentally was a copy of a device from Popular Electronics.

If you want to limit it to PCs (which the original quote did not), then you might as well rule out Apple too.

They build (or rather, subcontract offshore companies to build) phones and tablets, neither of which by any stretch could be considered general purpose computers the way PCs could, and an increasingly shrinking line of computing appliances, ditto. Of course that's pretty much true all the way back to the original Mac, except for a brief period when Jobs wasn't around.

If you want to limit it to PCs (which the original quote did not), then you might as well rule out Apple too.

They build (or rather, subcontract offshore companies to build) phones and tablets, neither of which by any stretch could be considered general purpose computers the way PCs could, and an increasingly shrinking line of computing appliances, ditto.

They also build Macs, which

come, by default, with an OS that lets you pop up a terminal window and run the usual UN*X command-line interface;

put the initial account in the "admin" group by default, so that the user can, in that terminal window, use sudo;

offer development tools for that OS for free, and don't prevent you from writing code for it and letting others run that code (you can't go through the App Store without jumping through hoops, but it's as yet undemonstrated that they'll go the App Store-

I didn't see anything about a personal computer qualifier in the FA. Schiller said "computers".

Wrong. If you go to the ORIGINAL SOURCE [macworld.com] of the quote, a story at MacWorld, you find that Schiller is in fact talking about PCs:

"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," said Philip Schiller, Appleâ(TM)s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in an interview on Apple's Cupertino campus Thursday. "Weâ(TM)re the only one left. We're still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over."

That may or may not be an accurate opinon, none the less, the subject here is PCs.

I thought the story was a reasonable one. While I do miss the pre-Dice days, the days I really miss are the pre-Y2K days. Taco commentary, movie reviews, "quickies," Hemos, Cowboy Neal poll options... I just enjoyed the by-the-seat-of-their-pants feel. And that has been gone for quite some time. Certainly before you registered.;-)

I *do* think that the content was better back then. I really felt like Rob not only had a vested interest, but really put part of himself into the site. I strongly feel that Roblimo's entrance was a direct correlation with a diminishment in fun. I can't put my finger on it, but something about the guy just rubs me the wrong way -- though if I'm honest, it probably started with the Alex Chiu story (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/01/06/01/1250257/ask-internet-icon-alex-chiu). And damn, but that was 2001.

I think there was plenty of Apple hatred back then, it's just that there were no fanboys to defend them. Everyone pretty much nodded and said "mm hmm".

Shit, I can remember hating Apple all the way back to the stupid ][ that sat in the corner of our elementary classroom and never got turned on because there weren't any teachers that wanted to bother teaching us how to use it.

I clicked on that timeline link, using my iPad. Thing is, that page doesn't work well with touch devices. Schiller probably did the same thing I did, and naturally came to the conclusion HP's history ended in 1966.

I can think of a couple of other manufacturers who are still going, and were producing machines at the the time of original Mac. One of these is a major name, another is obscure, even in it's own country.
The first is of course Toshiba, who were producing CP/M systems in 1980, if not earlier.
The other is the British manufacturer Research Machines, who produce exclusively for the UK educational sector. Their RM 380Z, another CP/M box, appeared in 1977. RM are still producing PCs for education today, but I believe that they will soon be moving out of hardware whilst continuing with their software and support services.

But go on, tell us more about how you are the only ones left from that time making personal computers. And how you created the GUI. And the portable music player. And the smartphone. And the tablet computer. Oh yes, tell us more...

"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone, we're the only one left. We're still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over." said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing

As far as making personal computers before Apple and still doing it, I think it's a stretch to count HP because of a calculator, and I'm not even counting HP's attempt to get out of the PC market recently. The HP-150 that came out after they started working on the Mac... is that even in the same ballgame as the 1984 Mac, I don't think so.

Apple started on the Mac in 1980 from what I can tell.

The nitpicking is really skewing his point - HP is ALSO still around because they've had to reinvent the

HP doesn't have the tradition of a "Computer Company". They make computer hardware, but that doesn't put them in the same league as Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Oracle. Same goes for Dell and Lenovo.

Full disclosure, I've purchased 2 HP laptops in the last two years, so I'm not bashing on HP. They made/make the best calculators and they used to make electronic test equipment. Those were rugged (as much as test equipment can be outside Fluke), accurate and high performance. They also used to make the best laser printers you could buy ( at a reasonable cost). Moving into the commodity PC market and selling off their test equipment branch was a huge mistake. They've had some really bad leadership over the years and they seem to keep killing their best products just at the point when it could really make a positive difference for them.

They're not a computer company, they just happen make computer hardware...this month...next month may be something else.

They have a pretty good storage and cloud systems management software products. I think they should dump their PC division and focus on the infrastructure and services distributed cloud services will need.

I know I'm showing my age, but when I was little, computers were these huge things that sat in climate-controlled rooms. Unless that kind of hardware is now removed from the definition of "computer", I can think of a few pre-Apple manufacturers that are still around, like IBM, NCR, and Unisys.

And how is this relevant? BTW did you know that PC's way back in the days of Mac used standard components? It is only Mac that uses stupid custom components giving them some of the worst repair ratings in the industry.

True. But Apple doesn't use standard components except the HDD. And even they are phased out for custom SSDs. All Macs are designed and engineered by Apple in Cupertino, incl the logic board. Quanta and Foxconn assemble them. They don't create them.

HP PCs on the other hand uses standard components like everyone else.

The only non standard part Apple use is the motherboard, everything else is pretty much standard parts, memory, HDD, CPU's, GPU's etc are all stock standard parts available in whatever flavour machine you want Apple or not.

The only non standard part Apple use is the motherboard, everything else is pretty much standard parts, memory, HDD, CPU's, GPU's etc are all stock standard parts available in whatever flavour machine you want Apple or not.

That's not true. They usually use modified versions of standard components. The current MacBook Pro has the RAM and SSD soldered onto the motherboard, and while the CPU is standard it has a custom connector and cooling system that has forced enough physical differences in the chip that it cannot be replaced. Most macs these days don't even have a GPU, they rely on intel's latest integrated ones which are finally pretty decent.

The Mac Pro is the only model Apple sells with fully standard CPU... but the GPU is non-standard, it's made by AMD but is a weird hybrid of two different GPUs that AMD sells, and Apple is the only company who can use it... one of the two GPUs in the mac pro even has a socket on it so you can plug in a bloody PCIe SSD card. On the GPU! They ran out of PCIe lanes on the processor, so the SSD has to share the lane of the second GPU which is actually a sensible choice since it's highly unlikely you will be maxing out the PCIe card (1.5GB/second) at the same time as doing serious computations on the GPU. That definitely is not a standard part.

On iOS apple builds everything themselves, they are famously known to have over 1,000 engineers working on just the CPU for the iPhone. They haven't gone that far with the mac but it's standard procedure to take components from other companies like AMD and Intel and Qualcomm but then modify to suit their own needs.

Mainframes and minis apparently don't count, which makes no sense. IBM still sells plenty of computers, just not PC's. The apple spokesman's quote did not specify PC's. They said computers as a whole, so they are wrong on two counts at least.

They're still around and own Gatewy as well. While Schiller was probably correct in the sense most of the dozens of PC makers of any size from the early Mac era have come and gone he was not correct in saying none still exist. Of course, what constitutes still existing is a bit vague since many have been acquired or exit but have exited the PC business.

From the context it's pretty clear he meant "around and making personal computers." Which means this was a statement from marketing that is only untrue if you a) intentionally distort the context, and b) insist on rigorous definition of "personal computer" that includes things like calculators.

Be honest. When's the last time your company's marketing guy was that close to the truth.

I still count IBM. I believe that quite was, "Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone."

IBM is still around. Maybe they sold their business, but the company is still around and the business they sold to Lenovo is still going strong.Likewise for HP, Dell, hell even Atari are still around. Sure their businesses have changed, but so did Apple's. Mac has far less mindshare than iPhone and iTunes these days.

Well yeah they kind of invented the fucking things. And everyone else stole the BIOS from IBM. Sorry, I mean "Reverse engineered." Back when that sort of thing was still legal. Of course if you look at IBM, they're really more of a conglomeration of smaller companies and their desktop division got sold a while back. Not profitable enough. So if you had some sort of device that allowed you to travel in time from the past (I have a car that does this, at the rate of one second per second,) you might not reco

Apple Computer was rebranded Apple in 2007. It's clearly the same company, and had nothing to do with the launch of the Mac in 1984 - it was rebranding because Apple sells tons of phones and tablets, and not just "computers". And since it's clearly the same company, changing "Apple Computer" to "Apple" doesn't affect whether their claim is correct or not.

To drill into their details:- "When we started the Mac" was several years before the Mac shipped. Specifically, it was 1978, when the Lisa and Mac both sta

Dell doesn't really count. They weren't around back when Apple was founded. If you're curious, Apple was founded in 1976, Dell in 1984.

The quote was "Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone", not "Every company that made computers when we were founded, they're all gone", so it's irrelevant that Apple was founded before Dell.

The HP 9830A [wikipedia.org] introduced in 1972 was their first programmable desktop computer [hpmuseum.org] with a full keyboard. The programmable 9100 calculator [wikipedia.org] from 1968 was technically a computer too but lacked a full alphanumeric keyboard. Thus predating the Apple I by some years.

I think you nailed it. 30 years ago HP didn't have a computer line for home users. IBM did, but they don't now. Apple did then, and they still do now. Their claim is really quite defensible. The guy should have said "Of all the companies that were making consumer computers in 1984, we're the only one left that's still doing it." But I think it's not a stretch to interpret his sentence in just this way.

I'm a relative young buck when it comes to these things, but I remember my first computer (received when I was 8) was a 386 running Windows 3.1 with a 32MB HDD and IIRC 8MB of RAM...back then PC's that weren't Macs were called "IBM-compatible." Just reflecting out loud on how old I feel these days, lol.

He didn't make a mistake, he knowingly made a false statement in order to posture Apple above other computer makers. It is not possible for anyone that has anything to do with the computer industry in a professional capacity to "forget" about IBM, HP, Dell, Acer, NEC, Sony, Cray, Fujitsu, etc. who all made computers from before or since the Mac to current day.

IBM just announced Lenovo is purchasing the server business, so... that correction is false at least. The Dell one is too, since Dell started in late 1984, nearly a year after the first mac shipped.

The rest check out. The MSX is of particular note, as it's the platform (MSX2) where the Metal Gear videogame franchise started. Unfortunately, most people are more familiar with the later NES port. It was a pretty terrible port with much more primitive graphics and lots of important stuff removed, like, say, the actual metal gear the game is named after.

f) Fujitsu made computers in 1954, and PC's in 1981 [wikipedia.org], before the Mac

But yeah...you were right about IBM & kinda right about Dell (though it could be argued it was just a rename of his PC's Limited...which started in 1984), so I guess 2 out of 8 is a good day for you....

If you're going to say that it doesn't count if it wasn't IBM PC compatible, then Apple doesn't count, either. Early Macs were clearly not PC compatible - never mind that the processors and file formats are different, the disks - even if they fit in the other computer - won't be readable due to incompatible low level formatting.